Jon Voight reveals his low pay for 'Midnight Cowboy'

While it might have been the part that jump started his film career,
Jon Voight says his role as a gay prostitute in "Midnight Cowboy" wasn't exactly helping him pay the bills. While promoting his new movie,
"Getaway," Voight reveals he received scale for the 1969 movie, the bare minimum a production can pay an actor, according to the
Associated Press.

"I said, 'Tell them I'll do this part for nothing'," Voight recalls. "They took me at my word and gave me the minimum for 'Midnight Cowboy.'" He says the studio even sent him a bill from a coffee shop for meals he ate on the last day of filming.

While he says "it was the worst," Voight doesn't regret it for a second. "I knew what it meant," he says. "It was going to give me a career and I was right." The role even got him an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. While he didn't win that year, he scored the Academy Award in 1978 for "Coming Home."

"Getaway," which also stars
Selena Gomez and
Ethan Hawke, is in theaters August 30.